Parental leave reform in Greece and gender equality: early labour-market effects

This paper examines the early labour-market effects of the 2021 parental-leave reform introduced un-der Article 28 of Law 4808/2021, adopted within Greece’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). The reform extended paid leave rights for both parents and aligned national provisions with Directive (EU) 2019/1158 on work–life balance. Greece, characterised by comparatively low female labour-force participation and limited uptake of paternal leave, provides an informative case for assessing how institutional design and European-level policy frameworks can influence gender-equality outcomes in Southern Europe. Using quarterly microdata from the EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and a dy-namic difference-in-differences design, we estimate short-term changes in employment patterns among eligible parents relative to non-eligible comparison groups. Results indicate a moderate, but statistical-ly significant, increase in female employment continuity and a slight rise in paternal leave participa-tion. These findings suggest that in labour-market settings with limited prior experience in work–family policy provision, targeted parental-leave reforms can generate positive behavioural responses when supported by adequate resources and implementation capacity. More broadly, the study contrib-utes to debates on social-policy adaptation within the European social model and situates the reform within the broader institutional context shaped by recent European recovery and social-policy initia-tives.